In recent months, the traditional chat show has come under fire. Now, however,
there are hopes the format can be revitalised - on a smaller screen

"The talk show is dead!" So proclaimed the headlines on a number of newspapers this week, as it emerged that viewers are turning off the BBC’s latest offering, The Michael McIntyre Chat Show, in their droves, with just 1.7 million - less than half his debut audience - tuning in to the third episode on Monday night. Insiders have said that McIntyre, a comedian by trade, isn’t “entirely comfortable” with the one-to-one format, suggesting that the Beeb won’t be bringing it back for a second series.

His experience, however, is far from unique. Where the heavyweights of the past – Sir Michael Parkinson, Sir David Frost, Russell Harty – flourished, recent forays into the talk show arena have faltered, failed and fallen flat. Fellow comedian Rob Brydon lasted three series with his BBC Two series before it flopped in 2012; Davina McCall’s 2006 show was axed after eight episodes and singer Lily Allen, who appeared on screen for three months in 2008, described her own show as “average”.

“The trouble with chat shows,” said Parky of the modern genre, “is that everyone fancies their chances. Even those on the extreme fringes of the ever-expanding world of modern celebrity reckon it’s a doddle.” As McIntyre’s efforts – and those of Charlotte Church, Chris Moyles and Jeremy Clarkson before him – show, it’s not. But what’s surprising about the reaction to McIntyre’s series is that he isn’t one on the “extreme fringes”: he’s an A-list stand-up, whose 15,000-capacity stadium gigs sell out in a matter of minutes, and whose BBC One Comedy Roadshow draws in 5.5 million.

If the host isn’t to blame, then, are audiences are going off the very format of the chat show itself? Viewing figures suggest this may be the case. Even today’s popular programmes – BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show, ITV’s The Jonathan Ross Show, Channel 4’s Alan Carr: Chatty Man – only pull in audiences of around three million; not a patch on the 12 million who watched Frost and co in the Sixties and Seventies. Crucially, the UK still lacks a talk show big shot – our version of the hugely popular American hosts: David Letterman, Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres.

The people at Waitrose think otherwise. The British chat show, they insist, is alive and well – and to prove it, as announced last month, they’ve got Mr Conversation himself, Sir Michael Parkinson, on board with their new venture on Waitrose TV. Top Table, due to air at the end of April, is a six-part, 30-minute series, featuring Sir Michael, 78, interviewing a host of foodie celebrities, from Heston Blumenthal to Angela Hartnett. It will be shown on Waitrose.com, and is designed to move beyond the supermarket’s customers to a mainstream audience, taking in culture, sport and art.

Could this online-only format be the future of the chat show? I went along to the first day of filming to find out. In the airy kitchens of the supermarket’s cookery school in north London, Sir Michael and Mary Berry, his first guest, are being primped to go on air.

Within a cloud of hairspray, they make small talk, joking about being the same “vintage” – and it’s just like old times on the set of Parkinson, which ran from 1971 to 2007; a steady stream of conversation peppered by the gentlest of questions.

The cameras start rolling and he, masterfully, takes the lead, using only a brief autocue and doing the rest of his interview off-the-cuff. The pair are faultless, witty and full of shared anecdotes: Mary talks about her dog once eating a cake she left out in her hall; her guilt as a working mother; being petrified the first time she appeared on TV. They move into the kitchen, where she shows Sir Michael how to make a butternut squash lasagne and he takes on the role of sous-chef, clowning around with a pair of oven gloves and telling Mary his wife “better never see this” or she’ll force him to cook.

It’s funny, insightful and engaging: a format that, undeniably, works. Filming is slick, professional and TV-worthy – helped in no small part by the presence of Parkinson Productions, Sir Michael’s company, which is stage-managed by his son, Mike. Walking round the set grinning is Waitrose’s marketing director, Rupert Thomas, who reckons “people will love it”. “Sir Michael is hugely trusted – he must be the best-known interviewer in the world,” he beams. “He was the obvious choice for us and we were lucky that he wanted to get on board.”

What prompted them to launch their own chat show? “We’re aware that customers want to consume content on their mobile phones, on the bus, in the office; it’s an alternative to watching conventional TV,” says Thomas. “I think we are trusted enough to be at the forefront of that, and we’ve invested in Waitrose TV since it launched 18 months ago. We thought, ‘How do you engage with well-known celebrities?’ and we came up with this format. We aim to provide inspiring content – it’s not about selling something. We haven’t asked the celebrities to talk about Waitrose products at all.”

A glance at the few other surviving chat shows on TV suggests they might be on to something. Adding something novel into the mix – a cookery element, for example – might be just what it takes to bring the classic talk show up to date. Just as music is the secret to the success of Later…With Jools Holland; so humour is behind the continued appeal of Norton, Carr and Paul O’Grady, whose teatime show returns for its 13th series on ITV later this year. The comedian Jack Whitehall, too, has added a twist to his new show, Backchat, which he presents alongside his father, Michael.

If this something new is an online dimension – or content that is exclusive to the web – all the better. While traditional formats are constrained by scheduling demands, leaving shows such as McIntyre’s in the 10.35pm graveyard slot, web-only episodes can be watched anytime, anywhere. Doing a chat show on Waitrose TV is the equivalent of an iPlayer-only series, a succession of which the BBC launched earlier this month, on the back of success of the American streaming service Netflix

One day, says Thomas, series such as Sir Michael’s could compete with, or indeed replace, those on traditional channels. “It would be a bold ambition for us to take on the BBC at the moment, but having said that, if you can provide good content and make it accessible to people, they will come to you. The media market has fragmented massively and you’ve got to provide content for the moments in their lives when people want to consume it. This is undoubtedly the future.”

Having made his name on the small screen, moving to an even smaller one seems an odd move for Sir Michael. But it looks like his gamble with Waitrose TV might pay off. Talk show stalwarts like him are far from being figures of the past – just look at Letterman in the US, whose 30-year contract has recently been extended until 2015.

So, if the internet is the place these stars can survive, long live the cyber chat show. And hurrah for its virtual hosts.